I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans

As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

The Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs, as the company calls them, bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back. Absorbed rays indicate dense material such as steel. Scattered rays indicate less-dense objects that can include explosives, drugs, or human bodies. That capability makes them powerful tools for security, law enforcement, and border control.

It would also seem to make the vans mobile versions of the same scanning technique that’s riled privacy advocates as it’s been deployed in airports around the country. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is currently suing the DHS to stop airport deployments of the backscatter scanners, which can reveal detailed images of human bodies. (Just how much detail became clear last May, when TSA employee Rolando Negrin was charged with assaulting a coworker who made jokes about the size of Negrin’s genitalia after Negrin received a full-body scan.)

“It’s no surprise that governments and vendors are very enthusiastic about [the vans],” says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “But from a privacy perspective, it’s one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

AS&E’s Reiss counters privacy critics by pointing out that the ZBV scans don’t capture nearly as much detail of human bodies as their airport counterparts. The company’s marketing materials say that its “primary purpose is to image vehicles and their contents,” and that “the system cannot be used to identify an individual, or the race, sex or age of the person.”

Though Reiss admits that the systems “to a large degree will penetrate clothing,” he points to the lack of features in images of humans like the one shown at right, far less detail than is obtained from the airport scans. “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be,” he says.

But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images. Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment. Reiss says AS&E has customers on “all continents except Antarctica.”

Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Who takes responsibility for all the cancers resulting from the repeat exposure to this radiation, especially the operators who will eventually contract the testicular cancer which is most common with this type of radiation.

First, the body scan machines used by the TSA do keep a permanent record of all scans performed. So the claim that the machines do not keep them is false.

Second, has any of these “einsteins” given any consideration to the effects x-rays have on developing fetuses. Where are the warnings at airports to women of childbearing age? Let alone, where are the warnings to women of childbearing age who are in public places that they are being x-rayed? While we may not have an expectation of privacy in public places, we do have an expectation of privacy under our clothing.

A lot of folks are commenting on the health effects of this kind of x-ray technology. As a security and privacy writer, I’ve focused on the potential privacy risks of AS&E’s technology. But for fairness’s sake, I wanted to offer AS&E’s defense on the health front.

The company’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss told me in an interview that any dosage received by a human from these backscatter vans would be “exceedingly small,” far smaller than a medical x-ray. He says that the vans’ dosage falls well within the health standards set by American National Standards Institute, and AS&E’s marketing materials say that the scan’s x-ray levels are equivalent to the dosage received in fifteen minutes inside a typical airplane.

THAT is the lamest reply, response, and rational…So much deception , intentional or not being spewed in todays world. THAT is like the manufacturers of Twinkies , stating that they are offering a nutritional health food, the “TWINKIE”…AND since they say its good for you, and will not harm you much, it is to be accepted, as HEALTH food.

WAKE UO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THEY ARE LYING!!!!!!!!

THREE Three Skyscrapers came down at near free fall, as if nothing were under them, on September 11, 2001….THREE.

While the vice president of marketing can take comfort in facts and specifications he barely understands, what qualification does the ANSI have to decide what is harmful and what is not?

Furthermore, even if it isn’t “that” harmful, does it make it right to use it? What authority does AS&E (or any government) have to make decisions to radiate and scan others knowingly or unknowingly? They certainly don’t have my permission.

I am not a writer on security issues; I am an expert in Nondestructive Evaluations though. The thing to remember about x-rays is that their effect is cumulative. The dose received at one source is added to the source received at the next source. So you get a dose when you pass the bag scanner, you get another dose at the body scanner, you get dosed again while flying and you get dosed again when you walk past the security check point on the way out. If you fly again, repeat the whole procedure. Nobody is discussing the cumulative dose people are receiving with all of these different sources. Now you’ll get random doses from vans driving around? By the way the TSA people are getting really heavily dosed. I’ve watched them stick their arms in the bag scanners and they stand by these machines all day. I haven’t heard of any statistical testing done on TSA people and Melanoma but I’m willing to bet their rates are very high.

I would appreciate your also responding to the question about the dose of x-rays that one receives from the airport x-ray machines. I agree with Patsnyc that x-rays are a definite concern for women (and should be for men, as well).

What is the one-time dose? What are the cumulative effects for airline commuters? Even the dentist’s office will give a patient an x-ray shield. What are the public supposed to do to protect themselves from radiation?